Batman Arkham Asylum is released yesterday. Here is game about.

I’m sure that you all might’ve known more about batman, but if you’ve not read the comics, probably you might not be aware of term Arkham asylum. Arkham is Gotham’s home for the criminally insane. Arkham is the setting for a third-person action game in which the lunatics take over the refuge or asylum and you are supposed to stop them. Clown Prince of Crime flees away a few weeks ago, but Batman was able to track him down and re-incarcerate baddie. Being a Batman, you not only get to go toe-to-toe with thugs in fast-paced punch-ups, but you also employ satisfying stealth tactics, play with great gadgets, solve some remarkable riddles, and do a decent amount of detective work.

As you take the controls, Arkham Asylum wastes no time throwing you into the thick of the action. Almost immediately, you’re rushed by a few of Joker’s goons and encouraged to knock them out using both basic attacks and counters. Both the Xbox 360 controller and mouse-and-keyboard control schemes work very well, though the latter occasionally demands a bit more dexterity to perform certain actions. You’re free to move between the two options on the fly though, and the onscreen prompts for context-sensitive controls change accordingly. Using just two buttons on your mouse or controller, you can perform a huge number of moves from Batman’s superbly animated repertoire, and it isn’t at all difficult to string together combos worthy of Hollywood’s finest fight coordinators. That’s because for the most part, at least early in the game, combat requires you to do little more than mash the attack button and then hit the counter button anytime you notice an enemy with an “I’m about to attack you” icon above his head. None of the thugs that you encounter pose much of a threat individually, but you rarely encounter fewer than three or four of them at once, and often, you’ll be up against six or more. Furthermore, the vanilla thugs are joined by enemies with knives, cattle prods, and guns later on, who force you to raise your game and incorporate stun attacks and evasive rolls into your deadly dance routine. Boss battles against super villains like Scarecrow and Harley Quinn are definitely among the game’s highlights, though it’s a little disappointing that there aren’t more of them. One super villain in particular makes a number of appearances, but you never actually get to fight him.

The combat in Arkham Asylum never gets overly complicated, though the number of moves and attacks at your disposal increases quite dramatically as you progress through the Story mode, earn experience points, and subsequently spend those points on acquiring new combo moves and gadgets. Throws, takedowns, and even batarang attacks can be incorporated into your combos this way, but you never need to press more than two buttons simultaneously, and the timing of your moves doesn’t have to be particularly precise. Fighting against mobs of up to a dozen enemies or so is a blast, and while they’re not smart enough to all just jump on you at once, they’re not stupid either. Given half a chance, thugs will pull pipes from walls to attack you with, pick up boxes to throw at you, and recover weapons from fallen colleagues. Fortunately, there’s one weapon that your foes seem blissfully unaware of but which Batman is incredibly comfortable with: the environment.

Regardless of whether you’re getting sucked into the Story mode or competing for high scores in the Challenge mode, Batman: Arkham Asylum does an outstanding job of letting you be Batman. Everything about this game is impressive visuals, stirring soundtrack, superb voice acting and fiendish puzzles, hard hitting combat feels like it has been lovingly crafted by a development team that’s both knowledgeable and passionate about the source material.

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